A peripheral device (“peripheral”) is a device that is connected to and controlled by a computer system. Peripherals include such devices as a disk drive, printer, modem, optical scanner, or joystick. Peripherals may be connected to a computer system via various types of connections, including a PCI bus, a parallel connection, or a serial connection. Modern serial connections include Universal Serial Bus (“USB”) and 1394 connections. Modern serial connections generally permit several peripheral devices to be attached to a computer system via the same serial connection. For instance, a printer, a scanner, and a joystick could all be connected to a computer system via a single USB connection.
Computer systems generally include a program called an operating system that, among other things, manages communications between the computer system and its peripherals. In order to communicate with a particular peripheral, an operating system generally requires an additional computer program called a “driver.” The driver for a particular peripheral generally knows the capabilities of the peripheral and the command set for the peripheral. While modem operating systems generally include drivers for common devices, such as hard disk drives, there are many peripherals for which operating systems do not include drivers. In particular, operating systems seldom provide drivers for peripherals that were not available when the operating system was released. In order to use such a peripheral in conjunction with a computer system, the operating system on that computer system must install a driver for the peripheral. Providing such a driver can be a significant inconvenience for the user attempting to use the peripheral. For example, the user may be required to locate a floppy disk or CD that contains the driver, or to download the driver from the Internet. Based on the foregoing, a new peripheral that did not require the provision of a separate driver would have significant utility.
In addition to their drivers, some peripherals also operate in conjunction with other programs. For example, optical scanners often operate in conjunction with an application program for creating in the computer system digital representations of documents that are scanned by the scanner. Similarly, sequential access tape drives often operate in conjunction with file backup utilities that copy the contents of a hard disk drive to a sequential tape cartridge. A new peripheral that did not require the separate provision of these additional programs would also have significant utility.
Entertainment, or “game” software titles are available for many general-purpose computer systems. Such entertainment titles are usually distributed on CD-ROM. While some entertainment titles are small and can be completely loaded into memory from CD-ROM quickly, modern entertainment titles continue to grow larger and larger, containing large quantities of executable program code, as well as large quantities of data, such as digitized sounds, images, and video clips. Because of the relatively low data transfer rate of CD-ROM drives, these modern entertainment titles appear to load and execute slowly, which often produces significant user dissatisfaction. Based on the foregoing, a new, faster medium for distributing entertainment titles for general-purpose computer systems would have significant utility.
Further, entertainment titles and other software titles frequently contain some portions that must be loaded from the medium quickly, and other portions that may be loaded from the media more slowly. For example, an entertainment title may have executable code that must be loaded quickly, as well as a video sequence that may be loaded more slowly as the video sequence plays. Unfortunately, because software titles are typically shipped on media of a single type, developers must choose either to ship the entire software title on a medium having a low transfer rate and create user dissatisfaction during the loading of the portions that must be loaded from the medium quickly, or to ship the entire software title on a medium having a high transfer rate and drive up the cost of manufacturing the software product. Based on foregoing, a new, speed-heterogeneous medium for distributing software titles would have significant utility.